Issues with RAID card controller

[bbaker]

Hello.
I'm having a problem with my computer and I hope someone out there has some answers. Not long ago I installed a raid control card on my computer because I wanted a second hard drive on my computer but I didn't have the proper IDE plug for it on my motherboard. I wanted a second hard drive for extra storage space but now I would also like to install Windows XP on it so I can play some of my older games that do not work on my main operating system which is Windows Vista Ultimate.
Ever since I installed that raid card I have had this issue. When I turn on my computer it will go to a screen that at the top lists the raid card and it's manufacturer (JMicron.com) and the BIOS version V1.06.54. Under that it lists the hard drive (the 2nd one) that is connected to it and says 160 GB non-raid. Then under that it tells me to hit F1 to continue or F2 for setup. I hit F1 and then it loads Windows Vista. Before I installed the raid card I did not have all of that. Windows started normally. But I have dealt with the minor inconvenience. However, today I was trying to install Windows ME onto my second hard drive to ultimately upgrade it to Windows XP (For some reason I've always had to do it that way.). ME started installing fine but then it rebooted and I believe because of the raid issue the computer would not finish installing ME. It would take me to where I had to hit F1 or F2. I hit F1 and then it took me to "Windows did not finish loading correctly"...or something like that. It had a menu option to start Windows normal, logged, safe mode, or step by step. I tried each one of them but every time the computer restarted I always ended up back at that screen. So I'm thinking the raid card is preventing things from continuing as they should. Any ideas or help would greatly be appreciated.

Note... I'm not a real technical person so answers should be easy to understand. LOL!

Thank you in advance.

 

[TeraMedia]

I will assume that your first (Vista Ultimate) HDD is SATA, or else you could just use a master-slave IDE cable to connect both IDE drives to one MB IDE connector.

Your BIOS is configured to boot off of your first drive. Since Vista uses a different boot loader than ME or XP, the boot loaders for the latter won't enable you to dual-boot. I'm not even sure that ME (you really use Win ME? REALLY?) can be dual-booted from the Vista bootloader. So you may end up with a mess trying to do this.

If you disconnect your main HDD and try to install ME and XP when only the new IDE drive is connected, does your system let you do so? If it does, and that works, you can use the boot device selection option of your BIOS to switch between op systems. But your RAID card may not be bootable, in which case you can't take this approach either. XP has the "F6" floppy RAID card driver install process to include a RAID card driver into the boot sequence, but I don't know about ME.

Good luck. Doesn't sound fun.

Windows ME? Really?!?

 

[bbaker]

Thanks for the reply TeraMedia.

I guess I should've mentioned that when I was trying to do this I DID disconnect the hard drive with Vista Ultimate on it so it wouldn't interfere with anything or I accidentally erase the hard drive. And yes that drive is SATA. Your comment about Windows ME was funny. I do not like that version of Windows. I only used it when it first came out, but I still have the copy of the disk and a copy of the startup disk for it. In the past for some reason, if I wanted to install Windows XP it was much easier for me to install ME first and then upgrade to XP. I don't know why it was easier that way. Maybe I just didn't know a simpler way. I always had the dreaded NTLDR is missing message. So that's how I worked around it.
Any ideas on how to work around the NTLDR message and just install XP?

 

[TeraMedia]

So does the XP install process see the drive? If so, you should be able to install on it but I have concerns about the F1 / F2 thing you mention. You might need to go into that and setup your boot disk as a JBOD to get it to work properly. I just don't know because I don't know the bootability of that RAID card, especially w/ XP.